ANTALYA: With conflicts and defence spending surging worldwide, several leaders and environmental groups on Wednesday urged heads of state at the UN climate summit to redirect funds from wars to saving the planet.
“We are told there is no money, but the spending on war grows,” said Marshall Islands President Hilda Heine, whose country is among the most vulnerable to rising sea levels.
“The greatest security threat we face remains underfunded. I appeal to you: find money for life, not death,” she told the COP31 conference in Turkiye.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who has presided over a sharp drop in deforestation in the Amazon rainforest, said climate change had “disappeared” from the global agenda.
“We’ve turned to talking more about arms and tariffs than the survival of future generations,” he said.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan echoed the warning.
“Nature – no less than people – is also paying a heavy price for armed conflicts. The starkest example of this is Gaza,” he told the summit in the Mediterranean city of Antalya.
With wars in Ukraine, the Middle East and elsewhere and geopolitical volatility spurring widespread rearmament, global defence spending hit nearly US$3 trillion in 2025, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
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Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga summed up the environmental impact of his country’s war, from “poisoned soil” to deforestation and birds building nests from drones’ fibre-optic cables.
“For most countries here, the energy transition is a matter of policy. For Ukraine it’s a matter of survival,” he said.
“Russia is at war with our people and with our land, our water, our air.”
Climate campaigner Tasneem Essop said discussion of soaring defence spending was lacking at the annual talks.
“Rich nations come here to say, we don’t have public finance. And yet they have the public finance to spend so much on wars,” Essop, head of the Climate Action Network, told AFP.
Host country Turkiye plans to increase military spending by 229 per cent in 2027, as it and fellow Nato members bolster their defence budgets.
Turkiye’s COP31 president, Murat Kurum, had nevertheless said in September: “Every cent allocated to defence should also be allocated to preserving life on this planet.”